Very good, very old friends who have seen us through our various homes, came to see our latest project this morning. They arrived bearing a bottle of French champagne which they insisted on opening there and then to toast the long-awaited clearing of the site and to wish us well as we proceed from here. I suspect that when they saw the piles of rubble waiting to be removed or redistributed they thought we’d need an awful lot of ‘well-wishing’ but once that bottle was empty, anything seemed possible…

Needless to say the setting, in terms of a champagne celebration, was one of the more unusual we’ve enjoyed.